The CEO of Atomfall developer Rebellion says Baldur's Gate 3 boss Swen Vincke's frustrations with publishers "cuts across every industry" and are "very much" familiar to him.
At The Game Awards last year, Vincke gave a speech addressing the state of the industry, calling out everyone, including publishers. "I've been fighting with publishers my entire life, and I keep on seeing the same mistakes, over and over and over," he said. "It's always the quarterly profits. The only thing that matters is the numbers."
As it would happen, it's not only Vincke who feels that way. Talking to PCGamer, Rebellion CEO Jason Kingsley says the story was "very much" familiar to him too. "It cuts across every industry," Kingsley says. "But I am aware a lot of my colleagues get frustrated from time to time by people who are potentially very good managers but aren't specialists in the computer games area.
"There are horror stories of people having external producers saying, 'Look, you just need to make fewer bugs, because then it'll be faster to make.' And everybody's going 'Yeah, you're right, yeah. We really shouldn't have decided to put 1,500 bugs in'."
It is, indeed, a rough climate in which to release games. Vincke's comments came off the back of a year stuffed with studio closures and headcount reductions showing little signs of slowing down. It all comes from a myriad of economic elements, sure, though the chase of infinite growth and short-sightedness among many decision-makers does little to help the situation.
Despite it all, Rebellion's next effort, Atomfall, will be released on March 25.
Playing Atomfall for 90 minutes booted me out of my comfort zone more than any other survival action game, and that's a very good thing.
